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My editor over at Another Castle forwarded me this email:
We are actually planning a desk side tour in April, which will end with a series of phone briefings at the end of the month (April 21-24). Although we're still working out which spokespeople will be available, if you could send me your (or I guess Erin's) best time slots to do interviews during those dates and we'll work something out from there. It would still be helpful to have Erin prepare her questions so if the phone briefing falls through we could go back to the questions.Yeah, I had no idea what a "desk side tour" was, either, until I googled it.
Anyway, it looks like I have the opportunity to ask questions about the upcoming 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragon. The problem here is that I haven't been rabidly following the rumors and speculation regarding 4e, so I really don't know what to ask.
Rather than squander this opportunity, however, I figure I should try to exploit the resources inherent in teh intarwebz. If you are a fan who has a burning question regarding 4e D&D, either leave a comment here or email me at erin dot palette at gmail dot com. I will collect the best and most popular questions to ask during this interview.
What has been added in since 3.5, what has been taken out, and what has been rebuilt?
ReplyDeleteI've been playing D&D for 23 years. From 1st Edition, plus all the Basic Box (Red through Gold boxes) ones, up to and including 3.5. I doubt that I could really form any question(s) that don't entail really asking to read the whole book.
ReplyDeleteI guess about the only thing that I haven't seen answered anywhere else is info about Prestige classes. Are they in, if so in what way?
On a side note, as you can tell I'm a bit of a fan (fanatic) about D&D, so there's really no question that I'll be buying it at release =)
Prestige classes, from what they've released so far, will be completely different in 4th Ed. Levels 1-10 will be the "Heroic" levels and will entail your basic fighter, rogue, etc. Once you hit 11th level, you get to pick a "Paragon" class. Paragon progressions go from 11 to 20, and are supposed to be the closest analog to the 3/3.5 prestige classes. When you get to level 21, then get to pick an Epic class, which then progresses to level 30. From what I understand, you cannot advance beyond level 30.
ReplyDeleteI got this from the "Races and Classes" preview book, which you can get from your FLGS.
So here's my question... What about the party face?
ReplyDeleteFrom everything I've seen, skill selection has been drastically scaled back and simplified in order to focus all classes towards combat utility. In other words, they have decided that combat is the defining experience of the Dungeons & Dragons brand, and all character stats that do not directly support combat have been set aside as secondary factors. My worry is that this will make it much harder to create character concepts that are not combat-monkeys.
The expert thief who can get into and out of any secured facility in the kingdom? Not here, but you can sneak attack every round!
The hardened ranger who can track through a sandstorm and find enough food to let his party survive while stuck on a glacier? Not so much -- they even took away the ranger's druidic magic!
The party face with max ranks in Sense Motive, Diplomacy, Bluff and Gather Knowledge? No one would *ever* even want that! Not a single one of those skill have anything to do with combat!
I think you can see what I'm getting at. Let me know what you find.
Question -- I've seen action points on sheets explained. I was curious if there are alternate systems for action points that would do something different than give an extra action in a round (for example, the similar system in d20 Modern that allows one to reroll a dice).
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